Climate Breakdown and Book Publishing

This article notes the ever-increasing urgency of immediate action on climate change across all sectors. The publishing industry is aware of the need for action, measurement, auditing, and detailed reporting. Two of the largest STM (scientific, technical, and medical) publishers, Springer Nature and Elsevier, have started publishing annual reports covering their activity on climate change and sustainability. The article also considers attempts that have been made to measure the carbon impact of individual books. Such studies are inconclusive, and may not be helpful if the physical product is still GHG (greenhouse gas) costly in a time when all sectors need to drastically curtail GHG impact. The paper notes the need for continuing and sustained focus on mitigation and adaptation and suggests that the prospects for highly inventive adaptation through the long-established and growing ‘digital turn’ ongoing in publishing for 60 years are encouraging. A full digital transformation may yet be possible, necessary, and able even, in effect, to subtract the GHG costs of paper publishing from the global balance sheet measuring our climate breakdown.